by John Farrow
During her drive, she’d been doing this, chewing the cud of her past, regurgitating old debates and conversations as though she might masticate history until it became something quite different. She could scarcely believe it, but on occasion the water on the windshield was less of a problem than the tears in her eyes, but she could believe it when she assessed that she was not grieving for him, but for all the old gripes and the nasty memories and for what caused them, and she grieved for the life that might have been yet never had a snowball’s chance in a pizza oven. He was not a man she’d ever want to know yet knew him to be her father. That thought dredged up a well-worn anxiety—namely, how much of him existed in her?
Blacks is not a large town, although the drive in from the outskirts takes a while. The homes spread out, then a lengthy stretch of woodland returns, followed by shopping areas and more bungalows. Finally, the road dips to a mere smidge above sea level and a big arrow rears up on the right, indicating Grand Manan. The ferry won’t be running at this hour. She carries in her purse a phone number passed along by her father’s maid. A while back, she made the call, which gave her an address. She remembers the town well enough that she finds the street without too much difficulty, missing her turn once on account of the rain, but she circles back and finds it on the next pass and drives slowly along, checking numbers. Seeing anything is virtually impossible in these conditions. She gets out once and is soaked in an instant. She runs to a door and checks the civic address, then counts houses after that to hopefully land at the right one. She gets out again and gets soaked again. Some numbers were skipped so she’s gone too far, but on her third attempt at walking up to a door she’s right on the money.
She rings the bell and hears chimes.
The man’s been waiting for her. He lets her in as far as his vestibule and shuts the door behind her. They don’t know each other. Suspicious, his wife hangs back in the hallway and two small kids gape up at the visitor from behind their father’s thighs. She supposes that on a night like this she might resemble a feral cat.
A very wet feral cat.
From her eyes she clears hair away that feels knotted and pasted on her skin.
“Hi,” she says. Often the tallest in the room, she’s a head above him.
“You’re wet,” he says.
“It’s raining,” she replies.
“I believe you,” he says.
“Are you Mr. McCarran?” She tries to smile, first at him, then at his kids, but gives up when she receives no similar expression in return. She won’t bother trying her act on the man’s wife. The two women are about the same age. The man is much older.
“Sticky,” he says.
“Ah, excuse me?”
“My name. It’s Sticky.”
Perfect, she thinks. “Ah, okay. Sticky. Sticky McCarran? I’m the one who called. I need to get to Grand Manan.”
“In this weather? You don’t mean tonight.” When she does not answer promptly, he thinks that she just might. “Don’t you know how bad it is out there?”
“I’m led to believe that you own a good boat. I understand that you’re a pretty good skipper.”
“That doesn’t make him stupid,” his wife says from fifteen feet away.
The man doesn’t turn his head when she speaks. He continues to study the new arrival.
“I’ll pay four times your usual rate,” she says. “A fair price, times four. On account of the hour and the storm, and everything.”
He’s not a large man, but by the way he carries himself she can tell that he’s as strong as a bear. Being a fisherman, he would be. He seems to mull over her offer, then points out to her, “There’s a ferry in the morning. Usually that’s how people go. Plus, you can take your car.”
She nods, to accept his reasoning, and returns the gaze of the little girl on his left side. The boy seems the shier of the two, and looks back to his mom often, as though to make sure that she’s still there. Someone to run to should things get scary. Or more puzzling. The girl is waiting with bated breath.
“Mr. McCarran, it’s my father. He’s dying. Maybe tonight. This might be my last chance to see him alive.”
She notices now that he was quite determined when she first showed up, although she hadn’t noticed then, to dismiss her request. Now that he’s hesitating, she can spot the difference in his attitude. Almost like his son, he glances back slightly toward his wife, who takes a step forward and clutches her left elbow in her opposite hand.
“Sticky,” he corrects her.
For a moment, she’s perplexed, then acknowledges her mistake. “Yes. Of course. Pardon me. Sticky.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. He’s thinking to himself for a moment, then adds, “It’s a brute nasty storm, isn’t it?”
“It’s…” She begins as though she has something critical on her mind, then forgets what it is and starts over on a different tack. “He’s Orrock—my dad—he’s Alfred Orrock. You must have worked for him at some point. He gave me your number. I’m not from around here. At least, not anymore. I’m up from Boston. I’m his daughter.” She pokes her hand out. “Madeleine. Friends call me Maddy.”
He shakes the proffered hand, and she’s right. He’s strong. After they disengage, he stares at her silently for a moment, then checks back with his wife, who takes another step forward. This seems meaningful somehow. Maddy Orrock feels that she’s winning them both over, and the daughter is looking up at her dad as though urging him to go along with this drenched late-night visitor. This feral cat. The little girl is giving him her okay.
“Being an Orrock, you been on boats before,” he says.
“Sticky, trust me, I’ve been on boats smaller than yours in storms bigger than this. I won’t be a liability.”
When he shrugs, it’s not to fully concur. “A woman on a boat is automatic bad luck.”
She checks how that line is going down with his wife, and is surprised to see that she also seems to object. “Who says?” Maddy asks him.
“Everybody knows,” he answers.
“An ancient superstition, Mr. McCarran. Sticky! Sorry. You’re a more modern man than that, I’m sure.”
He appears to concede as much. “I’ll tell you how modern I am. I will take you across to Grand Manan for six times my going rate.”
She looks at him intently. Her glance skids across to his wife, but she’s holding firm also, no help there, then she looks back at him. “Six times. What’s that, a special tax for being an Orrock?”
He shakes his head, and his big right hand touches the cheek of his daughter with such tenderness that Maddy Orrock wants to weep again, although she doesn’t know why. He says, “The high cost of fuel is all. In a storm like this, we’ll burn triple to make headway. The tide’s running foul. The waves. I’m sympathetic to your situation, Maddy. A death in the family is a hard thing. Doesn’t matter the family.”
“Thank you, Sticky. For your sympathy. Six times the rate, then, because of the hour, the risk, the inconvenience, the cost of fuel, my family name, my gender, and my general desperation, I suppose.” She tries to laugh off her own animosity, but he’s still looking at her intently.
“You don’t get seasick at all?” he asks. “My wife, she gets seasick herself.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’ll be a black and rolling night. No fun to be had out there.”
“I expect to be sick. In rolling seas, I usually am.”
His look conveys a mixture of sympathy and admiration. “You go to sea still?”
She gives the question more attention than perhaps it deserves. “You know that my name is Orrock. Do you think I’ve had much choice?”
He goes on staring at her. “You have a choice right now tonight, you do.”
She agrees. “I want to cross to Grand Manan tonight, Sticky.”
He seems to be consulting his daughter when he looks down at her, then back up again. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll get my gear. We’ve done this be
fore.”
While he’s gone, Maddy finds herself exchanging a long gaze with his wife, then asks, “What did he mean by that?”
“He’s peculiar.”
“Your husband?”
“Peculiar.” Then she emerges from something, adding, “There’s tea. In the kitchen. Come through. A warm cup to send you on your way. You’ll be miserable through the night, might as well start out warm. I’ll make sandwiches, put hot soup in the thermos.”
The kids run through the house ahead of them as they go.
Maddy asks, “Can I leave my car in your driveway while I’m gone?”
“Off to the far right side will be fine. Don’t let the storm scare you. Stick will get you home all right.”
“Oh,” Maddy says quietly, “I’m not sure I’d call it that.”
“Mmm,” the woman says, as if she knows what she’s talking about, but that cannot possibly be true.
THREE
Lescavage stands by the window, where he views his own reflection in the dark glass. In his king-size bed, under the duvet, Alfred Orrock observes him.
A sheet of paper lies beside the old man.
The minister, as though addressing his own image, remarks, “All the dirt you dredge up in a lifetime”—he turns to confront his adversary and longtime friend before continuing—“all the harm you do to others, the mendacity you set loose upon the world just for the hell of it, for the fun of it—”
“How lovely. I’m getting a sermon.”
“—or because it’s in your foul nature, and yet, Alfred, you save the worst of it to the bitter end. I once thought that evil was an outmoded concept in the modern world. A relic of the past. Now I don’t doubt its presence anymore.”
That bare hint of an insipid grin radiates off him again. “Simon, Simon, Simon, this is why I chose you for the job! For your bons mots. Your gift of gab! I’m departing in style, but all this is nothing without your fine words. I’m privileged to be attending my own wake. But I also chose you, Simon, because you’re a weakling. You know that, right? Though it’s beside the point now. I appreciate what you bring to the table. So do it, Simon. Do as I ask.”
They stare across the room at each other, a broad gap.
Lamplight gleams on the windows.
“Right now?” Lescavage whispers.
“No time like the present. So what’s your decision?” Orrock inquires calmly.
“You bastard,” Lescavage responds.
“Like I said, I’ll put in a good word for you with the marching saints. If I get to see any, of course. I presume there’s some doubt that I’ll be in that parade. I keep my promises when I can, if I can, Lescavage. That’s one thing to be said about me when you’re standing over my grave. Or dancing on it. Dust to dust and all that, but I’m true to my word. Remind people. I don’t make many promises, but the ones I make, I keep, if I can.”
“Up yours.”
“Simon, you can do better than that, can’t you? Now’s your chance.”
Still, the minister does not move. He’s not sure that he can do this, only that he has no choice. A tremor traces a line up his left arm, and in a moment of paralysis, of internal panic, he thinks that he might be the first to die here. But no. He no longer believes in a God so kind. He won’t be delivered from this darkness.
“Do it, Simon,” the old man taunts him. “Don’t even think about it. Just do it quickly and it’s done. Then walk away. Out of the goodness of my heart, I’ve offered you more incentive than anyone can possibly need. I’ve given you no alternative, no way out. Put your silly conscience and your half-assed petty pride aside. Do it now. My daughter, you should know, is on her way. She’ll be here by morning—”
“You bastard.”
“Yes. I’m a bastard. That’s not news. Do it because you hate me. Do it out of rage—haven’t I made you mad enough? Or do it for mercy—who cares? Do it because it’s the right thing to do. Just do it. If you don’t, Simon, the consequences will fall on your head like a plague. You see? I have my own bons mots. Me and my devil poet. Oh, think of others, you limp prick. You know you have to. You’re that weak. Do what’s right for them.”
Fingers trembling, he gestures to the sheet of paper on the bed.
Lescavage, hands on his hips, bends forward at the waist. A kind of retch, partially a gasp, escapes him.
“Good. Good. It’s real for you now. Don’t hesitate. Don’t be a fool, Simon. Don’t talk yourself out of it now. Just go ahead and do it. Come over here. One step at a time. Come.”
The minister buries his mouth in the crook of his elbow as though to stifle further involuntary emissions from his diaphragm. Still, he half-bursts into tears and his torso rocks.
“Come. Come here. Come on.”
“You’re getting stronger. You don’t need to die tonight,” the minister protests.
“Hardly the point. If I don’t die tonight, you know what I’ll do next.”
Lescavage goes over. He won’t look directly at the man, but in his peripheral vision he sees him remove a pillow from under his head, then hold it up. He looks at the pillow now. It blocks his view of him. The man, this demon, sight unseen, is still whispering the same desolate encouragement to the tempo of a lover’s urgency. Lescavage knows he must do this, that somehow he must find the strength or the courage as he takes the pillow in both his hands.
He has no choice.
Orrock whispers, “Yes. Yes, Simon. Now. Yes. Now, Simon.”
That’s the hardest part, now done. Just to hold the pillow in his hands.
“Dear, sweet Simon. My sweet bitch. Do it.”
Lescavage whispers back, “Shut the fuck up.”
Then he raises the pillow high over his head while letting loose a guttural roaring, which evokes even in Orrock a fright, a joy, a change to his complexion. The old man’s eyes expand. The minister thrusts the pillow down across the man’s face and climbs upon him and mounts him as a lover might, except that he presses his body over the pillow on the man’s face and feels him buck beneath his stomach. The Reverend Lescavage cries out again, as though he is the one at his life’s end and who wants to stop this but he does not. He wants God to strike him dead for it, but He does not, and Lescavage releases another violent roaring to shut out the storm and the night and his own life even as the life beneath him finally ceases to respond. Orrock succumbs to death with no further objection, going all quiet and limp. The reverend continues to embrace him, to lie perfectly still over him, pressing his stomach upon the pillow and the man’s face as a lover spent, now, the reckless deed accomplished.
A further minute as long as an hour passes before his own breathing subsides, and he rises.
He stands over the dead man.
He knows that if he could not have killed him before, if he were still alive, he could kill him now. He’d kill him now for what he just made him do, the bastard.
Orrock denies him that privilege, as he no longer has breath.
Lescavage suffers a rash of self-pity rather than remorse.
Then gets himself under control.
Then gets to work.
First, he removes the sheet of paper from the bed and places it on the nearby bureau. He leans over the body and removes the pillow from the man’s face, although he’s thinking that the bastard doesn’t deserve this dignity. He returns the pillow to underneath the man’s head, and makes the corpse conform to a relaxed posture beneath the duvet. A body now that looks undisturbed, committed to an undeserved rest. “Your damned confession,” he complains to the corpse, and turns back the duvet and adjusts it comfortably below the man’s chin. He leaves both arms outside the covering and crosses them over his chest. He wishes his eyes would shut and the mouth also. Placing a hand on top of Orrock’s head, the other under his chin, he presses the mouth closed. But when he shuts the eyelids they draw open again.
He’ll let some coroner glue them permanently shut. In the meantime, he does this the old-fashioned way, fishing two coins fro
m his pocket and using them to keep the man’s eyes closed.
“I guess you got your last wish, Orrock,” he whispers to the corpse, bending over him, as though he might be heard and this is a secret that they might share. “Robbed me of my soul. Anyway, these are the last two nickels you make on earth.”
Lescavage takes the handwritten paper from the bureau and reads it, not for the first time. When he’s done, he folds it in half, then quarters, and slides it into his hip pocket. He buttons the pocket’s flap to keep the document safe. He then opens the bureau’s top drawer. A different handwritten sheet rests there amid facecloths and fresh underwear, socks and pills. He reads over this one as well, then restores it to its place.
He checks around the room for any evidence of what has occurred, for anything he might have overlooked, or for any echo of his spasmodic bellowing. He knows that no one could have heard him above the storm, but he strained his throat at one point and feels as though he can still hear himself, still see himself, as if overwhelmed by lust in the violent throes of a paroxysm. Gone mad. If what he did can be proved by an outsider, he believes that it cannot be proved by anyone living or working on this island. He is not afraid of discovery, only of what comes next. Of living with this secret. Of dealing with the consequences. Of living with himself.
Damn this man, to defeat him so cruelly, to induce him to carry out such a bestial act against all that he’s believed and cared about, against all that he’s thought and upheld about himself. To dash his sense of himself to ruins.